The Transformative Acquisition of Twitter by Elon Musk

1 – Branding

The biggest change to the platform is the rebranding. Elon Musk, obsessed with the letter X, renamed Twitter to X. He also removed the little blue bird logo. From now on, publications are no longer called “tweets”, but “posts.”

2 – Project

Twitter was a social network focused on current events, but X represents the future super application. Elon Musk aims to offer an application full of functions necessary for everyday life, similar to the WeChat service in China. X is developing various features, including a payment service.

3 – Features

The platform has seen significant changes in terms of features. The blue badge used to verify official accounts now only signals that the user is a paying X user. Post length limits have increased for paid users, with X Premium subscribers now able to post up to 25,000 characters (up from 280). Additionally, they can post 3-hour videos. X also offers paying users a way to monetize their posts by receiving a share of ad revenue.

4 – Economic Model

Advertising is still present on X, but the platform aims to reduce its dependence on advertisers. X Premium subscription users enjoy numerous benefits, and X is developing two more proposals. The first is cheaper but shows 100% of the advertising, while the second is more expensive but allows users to avoid any advertising.

5 – Competition

X faces competition from alternatives such as Mastodon and Bluesky. However, its real threat is Thread, a social network launched by Instagram. With over 100 million monthly users, Thread offers similar features. Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter a year ago prompted these changes as he aims to create a super app comparable to WeChat in China, while also reducing dependence on advertisers through the paid version.